A Father, Mother, and their Son
by JPluvia
Summary: Teddy Potter doesn't like his father's new girlfriend. He doesn't like the tired smile that crosses his father's face when he greets her, nor the way she sneers at his mother's portrait when she thinks that no one is looking. He misses his mother, and he knows his father does too. Even if his grandmother doesn't believe him, Teddy's going to fix it. Even if it means rewriting time.


**Chapter One – An Unexpected Arrival**

There was no flash of light or crack of thunder to signal his arrival. One moment Harry Potter sat alone in his room, his brow pulled into a soft frown as worked on his homework, an essay detailing the uses of murtlap essence, and the next a child with jet black hair and eyes the colour of the killing curse was sitting on his lap.

Harry stared down at the child, his facing sagging in an expression of shock and confusion. After four years of schooling at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry liked to believe that he had grown used to the weirdness that being a magical celebrity that had defeated a dark lord when he was a baby inevitably brought. He'd battled evil teachers, ancient basilisks, and soul-sucking monsters, and even Voldemort's pale, snake-like form rising from the bubbling cauldron last year.

This? This was new.

"Daddy!" The child cried and wrapped his arms around Harry's waist, burying his head in the loose folds of one of Dudley's cast off shirts.

Harry found himself freezing, the muscles in his shoulders locking up as his hands hung like dead fish in the humid air. Was this another trap? Another one of Voldemort's tricks? With that thought the world around him seemed to spin, hum of the dusty amber light from the room's single unprotected bulb echoing definingly in his mind. Please no, he thought. Not a child. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear his mother begin to scream.

_Please, not Harry!_

Harry felt his arms shake; the long, pale scar Pettigrew had carved down the length of his inner forearm aching terribly, its jagged curving form the same size as the black tattoos of the death-eaters. His heart pounded, the rush of blood joining the howl of pain that whirled in his mind.

"Daddy?" The child said, seeming to register Harry's unease and look up at him anxiously. His voice cut through the noise in Harry's head, and Harry suddenly found himself once again sitting at his desk, his arms still suspended in awkwardly mid-air. Harry was only slightly surprised as the child's hair shifted from its deep back to an uncertain, sickly gold. Werewolves roamed the woods on the full moon and goblins ran the sole wizarding bank, why shouldn't there be children who can change their hair colour at will.

However, the worry in the child's tone set Harry's nerves on edge. The way it quivered in the air, its unspoken meaning, reminded him far too much of a much younger, more child-like Harry, teetering on the threshold of his aunt and uncle's room after a dream of piercing green light and a woman's screams. It was after that incident that the door to his cupboard was locked every night.

The slight tightening of his jaw was the only sign that Harry Potter had made his decision. If this was a trap then, as far as Harry was concerned, Voldemort had already won. He would not harm a child. Not even if it were a death-eater in disguise.

"Good evening, little one," Harry said, his voice soft as he wrapped his shaking arms around the trembling child and pulled him closer to his chest. He felt the tension in the child's body relax as he burrowed deeper into Harry's warmth. His hair shifted back once again to a deep black.

For a long moment, Harry held the child close to his chest, feeling the fluttering warmth of the child's heart through the cast off shirt. Time seemed to slow and Harry felt the tension in his own body leave him, the child's warm joining his own. It was like coming home. A home that he never knew he wanted until this very moment. After a long moment, Harry pulled back, holding the child at arm's length and looking down curiously.

As his gaze tracked the child's form, Harry was suddenly glad that he had appeared here and not in the middle of Diagon Alley. There was simply no way that the wizarding public, scarily perspective of these kinds of oddities as they were, would not have immediately assumed the child to be his son or perhaps younger brother.

The child that sat upon his lap had had a kind, heart-shaped face and soft dusting of light freckles. Likely a gift from his mother, Harry assumed, as Harry's own angular features seemed to be a prominent Potter trait. Long messy hair framed the child's face, the soft locks the same raven black as the moonless sky above the Forbidden Forest. It was the same colour as Harry's own hair, and he felt himself reaching out and brushing his calloused hand along the child's soft locks without even thinking about it.

However, it was the child's large, green eyes that gave Harry pause. Since he had been attending Hogwarts, he had been regularly told that his eyes were the same as his mother's, a connection that he had spent many sleepless nights trying to understand, to burn into his own brain, as he stared at the family album Hagrid had gifted him many years ago. However, the child's deep, emerald eyes, the same vivid green as the killing curse, were not those of Harry's mother. Not those of the mother he had never known waving out at him from beyond the glossy photos. They were Harry's eyes.

An odd, sudden burst of warmth ignited deep within Harry's chest, the heat filling his lungs so much that for a moment he worried he might burst. For a moment Harry sat in silence, letting the feeling wash over him, the sudden bubbling _joy_ a new and intoxicating emotion. Then he looked down at his son, truly looked at him for the first time that night.

His son had his eyes.

His _son_ had his eyes.

Harry pulled the child to his chest once more, his eyes closed tight as he tried to commit to memory this singular perfect moment. The child sitting on his lap was his son. A son obviously from the future, but his son nonetheless. A son that he knew now, without a shadow of a doubt, he would do anything to protect.

He wondered, tears collecting in his eyes, if this was the same feeling his father had felt when he had held baby Harry in his arms for the first time.

It was another long moment before Harry pulled away once more, his eyes somewhat misty as he looked down at his son.

"Now," Harry said kindly as he met the child's emerald eyes. "What happened?"

His son bit his lip, his eyes dancing away from Harry's an coming to rest upon a spot somewhere behind Harry's left ear. There was a shadow behind and his eyes, and for a moment Harry thought that he might begin to cry.

"I don't remember," the child lied, his voice quiet as he fiddled with the green bracelet upon his right wrist. Harry eyes followed the motion, his brow furrowing as he stared at it. Gently, he slipped his fingers under the child's wrist, not at all surprised to feel the boy suddenly tense as Harry tried to lift it up towards the light.

"Don't worry," Harry said softly, his heart breaking for his child. His voice had adopted the quiet tones that he had often heard new mothers use in the playground when he was a child. "I'm not angry at you, I just need to look at it."

The child held up his right hand, his eyes squeezed tight as the bracelet that circled his wrist glittered coldly in the light. Harry gently manipulated the child's arm, examining the band with a creased brow. Though it was somewhat simple in design, a basic circlet of murky emeralds set into a thin, web-like lay of tarnished silver. Odd runes had been carved into the gemstones and, while that sent a shiver of fear down Harry's back, it was another detail that made the hair's on the back of his neck stand on end.

The bracelet lacked a clasp, and although Harry tried to slip it from the child's wrist, it didn't budge an inch. For all intents and purposes, it appeared to be welded to the child's flesh. It was a dark artefact, that much Harry was certain of, but without his son's cooperation, there was little he could do to remove it or understand how it had allowed his son into the past.

While its presence upon his child's person worried him more than he would admit, as his son seemed to still be whole in body, mind, and spirit, it was not the most urgent of matters. He trusted his son would tell him in time.

"Alright," Harry whispered, pulling the child into a deep hug and resting his head upon the child's own. "Will you tell me about it when you are ready?"

In his arms his son nodded. Harry smiled, his eyes twinkling as he pulled back and placed a soft kiss upon his forehead. His son stared up at him for a moment, a shy smile upon his face, before his green eyes slipped from Harry's and began to circle the room. Evidently not finding much of interest, they settled upon Harry's desk and the half-finished rolled of homework.

"What are you doing, Dad?" He said, bouncing in Harry's lap. The child's wide smile had returned, and he was looking up at Harry with unashamed adoration. Harry found himself reeling somewhat, completely unprepared for the way his son's grin seemed to make his own heart beat with pride. What kind of father had his future self been?

A sudden slippery thought came to Harry, its sly whisper originating from the same part of his brain that Harry suspected the Sorting Hat had seen when it had suggested he'd do well in Slytherin. Perhaps he could find out, and maybe learn a bit more about his son at the same time.

"I'm writing a letter to your Grandmother," Harry said with a composed ease that was not shared by his beating heart. "Would you like to say hello?"

"Yeah," the child said, sitting up quickly in Harry's lap. He held out a pudgy hand for the quill that Harry slipped into his grip. With the other hand, Harry quickly grabbed a new blank piece of parchment.

Harry guided the child's hands across the paper, correcting the loose grip and loose swirling motions that his child seemed to favour.

"Dear Grandma," his son dictated.

"I love you lots. I don't know if you will remember me, but Dad does and I hope Mum will to," Harry felt a stab of guilt in his chest at his deception. "I am going to fix it, just like I told you I would. You should bake lot of cookies as a sorry for saying that I couldn't."

"Love," the child finished, his tongue poking out of between his teeth as Harry loosened his grip. The quill looped sloppily leaving deep black blots upon the parchment. "Teddy Potter."

Harry didn't know why he gasped upon seeing his son's signature. Logically, he knew his son would share his last name, but seeing it in black and white. Written down in the child's messy scrawl. It was as though it were somehow, only now, real.

"Daddy, what's wrong," Teddy whispered, his hair shifting to a watery blue as he looked up at his father with worried eyes.

"Nothing," Harry said, running his hand through the child's unruly locked, marvelling how much like his own they were. "I'm just tied, and I suspect that it's long past your bedtime."

"But, Dad," Teddy whined, trying to wiggle out of Harry's arms as he was picked off Harry's lap and laid over one shoulder. "I don't even feel tied."

"Of course you don't," Harry chuckled, surprised at his own strength as he carried the six year over his shoulder and to his bed. "You're not in bed yet."

He pulled the covers back with sweep of his free hand, and gently lay Teddy down upon the bed with his other. For a moment, as Harry stared down at the sunken bed, it appeared as though a shadow passed across Harry's features. Then, as quickly as it came, it vanished, and his face was split by a grin as he watched his son try to wiggle out from under his arms.

"Oh no you don't," Harry chuckled, leaning down with wiggling fingers. Teddy giggled, his limbs failing uncontrollably as he tried to get away from Harry's tickling.

"Dad!" Teddy cried as slipped from Harry's grasp only to be caught by his ankle and flipped over onto his stomach. "Don't—"

Harry cackled, blowing a loud, wet raspberry upon the Teddy's unprotected back. His son tried to swat him away, his laughter filling the room.

Tomorrow Harry would handle all that needed to be done. After all, no son of his would need to rely upon the Dursley's hospitality. But, for the moment at least, he and his son were happy.

**A/N: Well, there we are. Let me know your thoughts or any grammatical errors you find (editing is not my strongest suit).**


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